The iPhone was the first smartphone that hot insanely popular. It launched the app store model that’s now used on every mobile platform including Android. Those apps have gotten hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in India and China who are doing e-commerce and opening small businesses from their phones. That’s food on the table for the working class. They can earn money while looking after their children because they’re not chained to a desktop computer for internet access. People in remote areas can know instantly about natural disasters and the news, educating them and making them active citizens in a democracy.

People across the world can chat with each other for nearly free using messaging and social media apps, and won’t have to send letters or pay extra fees for long-distance calls. The iPhone got more people onto what formerly only Blackberry-owning business executive had.

It’s such a first world thing to belittle the impact of smartphone (an industry which the iPhone shaped tremendously), when it has so much tangible impact, especially to working people.

It’s just extra seasoning.

Why did the UK refuse?

It’s an example of one company coercing another to enshittify for revenue. Getty also gets the blame here.

• Google Image Search removing the ability to go directly to the raw image after Getty complained that web users are bypassing its website and therefore not generating traffic
• Facebook removing chronological feed
• Facebook showing you pages that you never followed on your home feed without the ability to turn this off
• Microsoft trying to introduce ads to Explorer and the start menu
• Microsoft making it difficult to create a local Windows account by making the process unintuitive, leading the user to believe that a Microsoft account is needed to use Windows
• Apple dropping support for iOS web apps because it doesn’t want to support browsers other than Safari
• Reddit and Twitter’s ban of third-party API use that killed nearly all third-party clients
• EA producing games that require users to be always online, despite the game being single-player, presumably as a DRM measure
• Ad companies making it easy for you to give consent to data sharing and selling but really difficult for you to opt-out

Edit: More examples

I don’t like the normalizing of using “woke” to describe progressives.

That’s not correct. This is the origin report under the Biden administration from the Intelligence Community. This is the summary:

[…] the IC was able to reach broad agreement on several other key issues. We judge the virus was not developed as a biological weapon. Most agencies also assess with low confidence that SARS-CoV-2 probably was not genetically engineered; however, two agencies believe there was not sufficient evidence to make an assessment either way. Finally, the IC assesses China’s officials did not have foreknowledge of the virus before the initial outbreak of COVID-19 emerged.

After examining all available intelligence reporting and other information, though, the IC remains divided on the most likely origin of COVID-19. All agencies assess that two hypotheses are plausible: natural exposure to an infected animal and a laboratory-associated incident.

• Four IC elements and the National Intelligence Council assess with low confidence that the initial SARS-CoV-2 infection was most likely caused by natural exposure to an animal infected with it or a close progenitor virus—a virus that probably would be more than 99 percent similar to SARS-CoV-2. These analysts give weight to China’s officials’ lack of foreknowledge, the numerous vectors for natural exposure, and other factors.

• One IC element assesses with moderate confidence that the first human infection with SARS-CoV-2 most likely was the result of a laboratory-associated incident, probably involving experimentation, animal handling, or sampling by the Wuhan Institute of Virology. These analysts give weight to the inherently risky nature of work on coronaviruses.

• Analysts at three IC elements remain unable to coalesce around either explanation without additional information, with some analysts favoring natural origin, others a laboratory origin, and some seeing the hypotheses as equally likely.

• Variations in analytic views largely stem from differences in how agencies weigh intelligence reporting and scientific publications and intelligence and scientific gaps.

The IC judges they will be unable to provide a more definitive explanation for the origin of COVID-19 unless new information allows them to determine the specific pathway for initial natural contact with an animal or to determine that a laboratory in Wuhan was handling SARS-CoV-2 or a close progenitor virus before COVID-19 emerged.

The article doesn’t say it’s happening. This is from another source:

Mao Xiangdong, vice-president of the Shanghai Institute of Technology and a member of the standing committee of the municipal people’s congress, proposed the idea during Shanghai’s ongoing legislative sessions, according to a post by China Development News, a newspaper under the National Development and Reform Commission.

It is not clear when the post was put online but it was removed on Friday morning

Source: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3295169/unplug-great-firewall-boost-chinas-competitiveness-shanghai-lawmaker-says

CNN++?

Why would China want to sell the lucrative secret TikTok algorithm to the US government?

Oh, how thoughtful.

Lol fuck Elon. Leave and divest.

What a clickbait title. It’s just a generative AI that turns meme images to short videos. Big deal.

Trump is garbage. Biden is running against Trump. Therefore, Biden is the anti-garbage. Basic reasoning, man.

@remindme@mstdn.social 55 days

I’ll eat my hat and comment here if Biden doesn’t gets his nomination. I didn’t say Biden is the nominee. I didn’t even use the word “nominee”. Its you who keeps attacking the straw man. But you know what? I’m 100% sure the DNC will nominate Biden. That debate performance was bad but he ain’t losing his presumptive nomination. Don’t confuse reality with what you want to happen.

So your logic is that supporting garbage is better than supporting the anti-garbage because it makes clear to everyone that you and everybody else are supporting garbage? Don’t you think voting Trump because “he will win” is a self-fulfulling prophecy?

LOL. A lot of flowery language there but not much substance. The Dems can’t switch now. Trump can instantly snatch on to that and attack whoever replaces Biden as an inferior desperate backup. Trump will say you Democrats have no idea what they’re doing and they can’t even stand behind their incumbent. This isn’t only about 2024 but also about the midterms. Who would vote for a party that backstabs their incumbent?

I think you missed the point here. To the believer, evidence is not the main concern. Many Christians talk about their connection and relationship with god, which is subjective. To them, god exists because they have faith, not evidence, that it exists. Where’s that faith coming from? As many others explained in this thread, it’s about finding the sense of community and comfort in knowing that somebody higher us knows best in the world of uncertainty.